lake; but we left that, with
its modern equipments and electric lights, and went where we had been
directed--to the Hotel Rhiner. Fraeulein Therese met us at the landing.
Alas! she was no longer the beauty of her love story of thirty years
before. She was ample. Her short hair curled like a boy's, as without a
hat she stood under a green umbrella, to welcome her guests. She had
large feet, large hips, a large waist, and large lungs; but as she took
our hands in the friendliest of greetings, and beamed on us from her
full-moon face, we felt how delightful it was to get home once more.

The Hotel Rhiner is severely plain,--almost unfurnished,--and its
appointments are primitive in the extreme. There was no carpet upon the
floor of our rooms. Two little single beds stood side by side. A single
candle was supposed to furnish light, and the wash-bowl was about the
size of your hand. Yet everything was exquisitely clean, and from the
windows of our corner room stretched away the blue Achensee and the
mountains of the Tyrol, making a view which made you forget that the
sheets were damp, and that the chairs were uncushioned.

Physically, I am sure that I was never more uncomfortable than I was at
the Hotel Rhiner. The bed squeaked; the mattress, I think, was filled
with corn-shucks, the hard part of which had an ungentle way of
assailing you when you least expected it. Yet, if now were given to me
the choice of going back to the Elysee Palace in Paris, or the Hotel
Rhiner on the Achensee, it would not take me two seconds to start for
the corn-shucks.

A rosy-cheeked, amply proportioned maid, named Rosa, dressed in the
picturesque costume of the Tyrolese peasants, installed us in our rooms
and advised us to row upon the lake and see the sunset before supper.

Tourists from the other hotels were being landed at our pier from tiny
boats, to have their supper at the Hotel Rhiner, for the cooking is
famous. Jimmie came and pounded on our door, executing a small war-dance
in the corridor when we appeared,

"We've struck our gait," he said, ecstatically, to me. "Virtue is its
own reward. This pays us for Baden-Baden and Paris. What do you think?
The Rhiner family themselves do the cooking. There are the old mother,
Fraeulein Therese, three sons, two daughters-in-law, and five
grandchildren who run this house. I have ordered the corner table on
the veranda for supper--and such a table! And afterward there is going
to be a dance i